Animation, Video, Props and Makeup

Tag Archives: crepe hair

Taking a break from being a zombie, I planned a different makeup challenge for myself last Halloween and went to my friend’s party as Teen Wolf.

To create the costume I bought a costume store Varsity jacket, made a fake fur tank top and fake fur mittens and a giant brown wig. Then I bought a werewolf makeup kit and a few metres of crepe hair. The crepe hair comes in long plaits and needs to be straightened out to be used. We found that ironing it was the best method. The makeup kit came with a brown palette of greasepaint with several tones, translucent power to finish and the dreaded spirit gum.

I wouldn’t rate the kit that highly. First of all, the colours in the palette weren’t labelled and trying to figure out the difference between mid brown, light brown, tan, dark brown and olive was actually a bit difficult because there wasn’t much difference in tone between some of them. Secondly, there were a lot of stages to the initial shading and contouring (around 12 to 15) which took ages and then didn’t show up through the top coat or the hair anyway so it seemed a bit pointless.

I can’t claim all of the credit for this look as I had to ask for my boyfriend’s help with it. As I’ve mentioned before with spirit gum – to get it sticky you have to be tactile with it, so before I was even halfway around my face with the hair it was stuck to my hands, my face and the bottle of glue in a big hairy mess. Two hours later the hair looked great. It was a 3 or 4 hour makeup job in the end. Next time I’ll skip out all of the contouring stages and just use one or two shades of brown all over as the effect would be the same.

I was really happy with the finished look. It kept me warm out in the cold, but unfortunately the wind and the long night of partying meant that I spent a lot of time molting.

My boyfriend went as Edward Scissorhands. His makeup had to be done quite quickly as we were pressed for time. First, I masked Nick’s eyebrows using a pritt stick – the tips you learn from youtube! Then I gave him a base coat with white face paint. In hindsight, white face paint was a bad choice as it had a chalky finish and didn’t provide a good base to then add contouring and shading to. It also faded, smudged and rubbed off easily as the night progressed. I’d love to get my hands on some dermablend concealers and a foundation palette or two but for now I’ll work with what I’ve got.

I used purple, grey and black eyeshadows to contour his chin, nose and eyebrows as well as hollowing out his eyes. From my bruise wheel I added a tiny purple tint to his lips and gave him some scratches and scars.

Nick’s costume was from a store, although he trimmed the wig a fair bit to give it some shape and we added extra belts to the black suit.

It was a great party with some brilliant costumes – zombies, mummies, serial killers and comic book heroes but my favourite of the night were a troop of Black Swans who had great makeup and a really original costume idea.